A smart phone river-monitoring application, restricted currently to Shanghai officials and environmental protection professionals, is to be available to public users. This app is part of Shanghai's waterway improvement campaign.

Image: fondriest

​Shanghai's environment watchdog will launch a smart phone application early next year for residents to oversee the city government’s campaign to improve waterways, a senior official said yesterday.

A professional version of the app, named Shanghai Ground Water Quality, has already been issued to local officials, or “river chiefs” charged with cleaning up polluted waterways and overseeing long-term sustainability, said Zhang Quan, director of the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau.

“I can check the water quality of 259 river sections being monitored across the city on my mobile phone even though I am in Beijing now,” said Zhang, a legislator in the National People’s Congress and is in the capital for the current session.

Image: globaltimes

As the app indicates, all rivers on Chongming Island have met quality standards. Most downtown rivers have been cleaned, shown as green spots on the app, but many red spots, which mean polluted, can be found near the boundary between downtown and outlying regions.

“The app will be available to the public in early 2018 to invite local citizens to monitor the water quality,” Zhang told Shanghai Daily.

​Currently, water quality is monitored manually by engineers who update the app's data on a monthly basis. Sensors will replace the manual labor to deliver frequent automated updates before the year finishes, which will also allow Shanghai residents to monitor their local water quality every 2-3 hours.